"Canada"

On Them, the first album by Themselves, Doseone pushed rap as far as it could go without turning into something else entirely. His one-of-a-kind flow reconciled a host of vocal mannerisms-- eerie sing-song, nasal slam-poetry, cartoon sound effects, whispery snarls, and mad cackles-- into Rube Goldberg machines that, somehow, produced alien versions of hip-hop. Where the hell do you go from there?

Over the next decade, Dose, and many of his Anticon cohorts (especially WHY?), solved that dilemma by basically giving up on rap and delving fully into the digitally bedeviled post-pop with which they'd long flirted. In doing so, they've produced many songs with really cool music and-- how to put this diplomatically?-- unique, divisive vocals. This describes "Canada" to a tee. The track is unambiguously awesome, with a majestic prow of bass pushing through a sea of tinkling china. And Doseone's vocals-- he sings, only a faint chipmunk whir to his voice memorializing the insanity latent in it-- are perfectly serviceable, if you can turn a deaf ear to the rather icky line "You're showing your pinkest parts in my absence." It just has a faint hammering-nails-with-a-Stradivarius quality if you've heard what he's capable of. The mild frustration is balanced out, though, by the poignancy of hearing someone suppress a pyrotechnic talent because he wants to challenge himself, be vulnerable, emote.